


Anything but an Obligation

by firelord65



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Anniversary, F/F, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27443728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelord65/pseuds/firelord65
Summary: The last thing that Tilly wants is to mess up a special night with Michael by doing something stupid. Like totally forgetting that they had plans at all.
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Sylvia Tilly
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2020





	Anything but an Obligation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kira_katrine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/gifts).



Tilly frowned as the timer beeped in the corner of her workstation. She swiped it away with a twist of her hand and turned back to her array of statistical models. There was never a good time to stop work in Engineering if Stamets was to be believed. And Tilly had certainly absorbed enough background radiation Stamets in her life that she needed things like the timers on her workstation to keep from getting _too_ buried in her work.

When another notification popped up in the corner, she swiped that one away, too. To really understand how the intermix burn rate would change with the proposed new compression system she needed to expand the model she was using in at least one or maybe two dimensions to properly consider all the variables. Her fingertips flew over the workstation as she pulled open the program settings once more. She wanted a clean file for this run through. It wouldn't take that long to set up the series that this required.

Stamets placed a hand on her shoulder, sending Tilly skyrocketing from surprise. "Sir!" she yelped before pushing her hair back behind her ears. Getting pulled out from her little zone of focus was always distracting.

Her superior officer arched an eyebrow before looking down at her screen. "Still working on the intermix project? I would have thought you would be out the door right at seventeen hundred," he commented.

Tilly frowned, caught between wanting to pick his brain on whether or not she should really include temperatures above fifteen hundred in her parameter list and trying to remember why she would be bolting out right at the end of her shift. She brought the previous models into focus on her screen. "Yeah, I wanted to give it a proper deep dive that it needs," she replied. Her swiping brought up the previous notifications back on screen as well. She hadn't read them at the time, knowing that they would just be her usual reminders that _you need to eat to keep from getting hangry, Tills_.

Stamets cocked his head. "Sure," he said slowly as Tilly finally absorbed the words on the screen in front of her. "But didn't you still have plans-?"

"Oh shit! I mean, oh no. I mean, yes," Tilly stammered as she frantically moved to close down her work with all the grace of a chicken on rollerskates.

The reminders - all variations on a theme of "Don't forget - 18:00!" - that she had been reflexively ignoring vanished in a half-dozen pushes. All were dated well over an hour past her shift's end. "Sorry!"

She dashed out of Engineering in a flurry of motion. Stamets' laughter followed her into the hallway along with a question raised by Reno that was sure to only lead to more laughter. Tilly couldn't focus on that now.

She was _late!_ Normally that might not have mattered. There were plenty of nights where she didn't end up in the mess hall until hours after her shift should have ended because something high priority came up. That was part of the job, part of being on Discovery. But any other night wasn't tonight.

Tilly jogged to her quarters, practically knocking poor Hugh down in the process as she exploded out of the turbolift. As she reached the door, she forced herself to stumble to a halt and once again tried to fix her hair.

"Smooth, smooth," she muttered under her breath to herself. Another adjustment went to her uniform to make sure that she didn't look too much like a disaster. Michael had told her over and over that she never thought of Tilly as the messy, harried woman she felt like sometimes after a long day in the belly of the ship, but that didn't quite assuage Tilly's fears.

The door opened as Tilly gingerly pushed the button. "I'm sorry I'm late." Tilly led with the apology as she stepped inside. "I know we said eighteen hundred hours because it was after both of our shifts were up today, but I lost track of things. There was that intermix project I told you about and it was just too important to not get it set up for the computer to run overnight."

She was over explaining, her nerves rattling in her chest as she spotted her girlfriend sitting patiently. There was a miniature set of chairs and table crammed into the center of their quarters. Michael had a datapad in hand though she had looked up on Tilly's arrival.

Understanding sat in the warm depths of Michael's eyes as she gently placed her datapad down. "Did you get the simulations set up, then?" Michael asked with a slight tip up of her chin. Tilly pressed a kiss to Michael's waiting lips before dropping into the opposite chair that seemed, obviously, to be for her.

Tilly winced. "Some of them. I almost had them done and then Stamets made me realize that I was late. I'm sorry, again," she explained. Reaching across the table, she squeezed Michael's hand.

"I wanted to make time for tonight and I botched that real good," Tilly admitted. She was at least half an hour late, even with the buffer between her shift's end and their date. Guilt sat heavy in her gut and her cheeks flushed from that and the impromptu run.

Michael ran her thumb across Tilly's fingers. "You haven't botched anything," she replied gently. With her other hand she held up her datapad. "You gave me time to catch up on my reading. And I didn't even send in the dinner request yet."

Tilly frowned, unconvinced. "Yeah, but I was late," she insisted. "For our _anniversary_." She had spent years listening to her mother complain about her father's inability to prioritize for the important things in life just like this. Yet she had fallen right into the same pitfall.

Michael turned her datapad and slid it across the table - as small of a distance as that was - into Tilly's hand. "What are you thinking for food?" Michael asked, ignoring Tilly's apparent distress.

Tilly looked down at the menu, still feeling a bit like she'd walked out of a whirlwind. Her girlfriend was too good at keeping things grounded, a skill that she cherished and envied in equal measure. She couldn't keep her eyes on the listings and returned to staring at Michael instead.

"I feel like you're just glossing over this. And I don't know why?" Tilly admitted.

"It's still our anniversary now," Michael replied simply. "It doesn't matter if we're on time or not because I know you still cared enough to run all the way here when you realized what time it was. It's pointless to put extra pressure on ourselves when, at the end of the day, we're both making the effort for one another still. We're going to have some good food and spend the night - however long that is - together. That's all that I wanted. Isn't that what you wanted?"

Michael had that way of making everything seem so formulaic, so straightforward. Tilly felt her lip twitch into a smile and her chest let go of that tight feeling of guilt. "Well, yeah," Tilly admitted.

"That's what I want, too," Michael said with her own smile.


End file.
